The Cognitive Functions Dementia Battery: A Novel Computerized Tool for Neurocognitive Disorders

The Cognitive Functions Dementia (CFD) is a computerized battery to assess the cognitive domains included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria for neurocognitive disorders. We aimed at examining the psychometric properties and the clinical validity of the CFD for neurocognitive disorders. Psychometric characterization was conducted in healthy individuals, stratified according to age, sex, and education to represent a norming sample. Analyses included structural validity and measurement invariance, assessed through confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and multi-group CFA, as well as internal consistency, and re-test reliability of the battery index values. Patients with major or minor neurocognitive disorder contributed data to compute receiver operating characteristics to assess diagnostic accuracy of the CFD indices relative to healthy participants. Data from 422 healthy volunteers and 81 patients were collected for the study. The confirmatory factor analysis model confirmed the validity of the structure proposed for CFD, with the five cognitive domains (attention, verbal long-term memory, expressive language, executive functions, and perceptual motor functions) describing an overall factor (CFD-Index). Good to excellent values of internal consistency and of re-test reliability were obtained for all indices. Importantly, CFD indexes were accurate in discriminating patients with neurocognitive disorders from healthy participants. The CFD battery is a valid and reliable computerized instrument to characterize patients with neurocognitive dysfunction.